Stocks close higher, break 2-day losing streak

Stocks broke a two-day slide and closed higher after the European Central Bank said it would start its market-friendly bond-buying program on Monday and Wall Street cheered a big deal in the pharmaceutical space.

Gains were led by utilities, financials and health care sectors.

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 38.82 points, or 0.2% to 18,135.72 and the Standard & Poor's 500 index gained 2.51 points, or 0.1% to 2101.04.

The Nasdaq composite moved back up towards the 5000 mark, rising 15.67 points, or 0.3% to 4982.81.

Stocks are coming off two days of losses after a high-profile rally Monday that catapulted the Nasdaq above 5000 for the first time in 15 years and pushed the Dow and S&P 500 to fresh record highs. The Dow and S&P are trying to avoid their first three-day drop since January.

In deal news, AbbVie (ABBV) acquired biotech cancer-drug maker Pharmacyclics (PCYC) in a deal valued at $21 billion. Shares of AbbVie fell 5.7% and Pharmacyclics surged 10.3%.

The big news of the day comes from Europe. The ECB announced that it was keeping its key interest rate unchanged near zero. ECB chief Mario Draghi also told markets that it would commence its sovereign bond-buying program at the start of next week and keep buying until September 2016. The ECB also upped its economic growth forecasts for both 2015 and 2016.

Wall Street and global investors view the bond-buying program, which mimics the policy used by the Federal Reserve following the financial crisis and is designed to stimulate the eurozone's lagging economy and stave off dangerously low inflation, as critical to getting the eurozone back on track.

European markets rallied on the news as Germany's DAX rose 1% and France's CAC 40 gained 0.9%. Britain's FTSE 100 was up 0.6%.

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Asian stocks, meanwhile, went the other direction on news that China now expects its economy to grow at "approximately 7%" this year, down from an initial estimate of 7.5%. Other countries including the U.S. would love to have such brisk growth -- but in fast-growing China, whose economy expanded 7.4% in 2014, that signals a slowdown.

The Shanghai Composite fell 1% and Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index lost 1.1%. Japan's Nikkei 225 bucked the trend, climbing 0.3%.